A Bernie Sanders Hail Mary in the 4th Quarter Would Be Disastrous

A number of times here in the shebeen I have defended Dr. Jill Stein, whom I know because our sons grew up as teammates at the Boston Fencing Club. In all my conversations with her, I have found her a serious and thoughtful person, especially on public health issues. However, as a politician, she now has jumped on my last nerve because she is seriously fcking with this nation's heartbeat. Per Guardian US:

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Jill Stein, who is expected to be endorsed at the party's August convention in Houston, told Guardian US that "overwhelming" numbers of Sanders supporters are flocking to the Greens rather than Hillary Clinton.

"Overwhelming numbers"? Bull, I suspect. Also, shit.

But in a potentially destabilising move for the Democratic party, and an exciting one for Sanders' supporters, the Green party candidate said she was willing to stand aside for Sanders. "I've invited Bernie to sit down explore collaboration—everything is on the table," she said. "If he saw that you can't have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party, he'd be welcomed to the Green party. He could lead the ticket and build a political movement," she said. Stein said she had made her offer directly to Sanders in an email at the end of the primary season, although she had not received a response. Her surprise intervention comes amid speculation that Sanders will finally draw a line under a bruising Democratic contest by endorsing Clinton's presidential bid next week.

Yes, Bernie Sanders, who would like to still have some influence in the U.S. Senate, and whose upstart presidential campaign helped push Clintonism to its biggest defeat within the Democratic Party since Linda Tripp turned on her secret tape recorder, likely will endorse the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president on the shores of the wild Atlantic in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Tuesday. I suspect he also might give a speech at the Democratic National Convention that blows the roof off the joint.

Meanwhile, back at the intersection of Purity Street and Fantasy Boulevard…

"If he continues to declare his full faith in the Democratic Party, it will leave many of his supporters very disappointed," she said. "That political movement is going to go on – it isn't going to bury itself in the graveyard alongside Hillary Clinton."

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Good. I hope it doesn't. I hope it's a constant fire under her feet for eight years running. I hope Bernie Sanders is one of the people holding the blowtorches. But the one thing it's not going to do, now or in the foreseeable future, is elect Jill Stein or anyone like her president of the United States. In that context, everything that particular movement does moves the country an unacceptable additional millimeter toward President He, Trump.

That is political malfeasance of the first order. And here is political dumbassery in the first degree:

"It's a mistake to think the lesser of two evils will fix things. A lot of people are in the target hairs of a neoliberalist nightmare. Wars are bankrupting us morally and financially. At least when Republicans are elected, people fight—when Democrats are elected, people are lulled into complacency and fall asleep."

Anyone who thinks a prospective HRC administration is a "nightmare" but that a prospective Trump presidency would bring upon the nation some sort of a cleansing progressive fire, should not be allowed to operate an electric can-opener without adult supervision.

But Stein is right about one thing: The system has arranged itself down through the years to eliminate the possibility of third-party candidacy, at least in those elections with extensive electorates. The only way to change that situation that I see would be to go to a system of proportional voting—and I wish Stein as much luck with that as Lani Guinier has had—so that third parties could have political clout in the national legislature without gaining majority status. (What we old Irish folk like to call The Parnell Gambit.)

That's a discussion for another day. The real business before us is to keep a vulgar talking yam out of the White House. Anything that diverts the country from that purpose is not medicine, but a long dram of hemlock.

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